i have a .msg file that i can open with excel. it lists the info like this

UR|1701069

AA|Author

TI|Title

CN|Fine

PU|Random House Children's Publishing

PP|Naperville, IL, U.S.A.

DP|2001

ED|First Printing

BD|Hard Cover

NT|1570717435 Fine/Fine Hard Cover Minimal wear present

KE|NORTH

KE|CAROLINA

KE|FICTION

KE|MYSTERY

KE|DETECTIVE

KE|POLICE

KE|PROCEDURAL

KE|MAGNUM

KE|CUDDY

KE|FICTITIOUS

KE|CHARACTER

PR|1.01

XA|4

XB|5

XC|BO

XD|S

UR|1701069

AA|Sachar, Louis

TI|Boy Who Lost His Face

CN|Fine

PU|Random House Children's Publishing

PP|New York, NY, U.S.A.

DP|1997

ED|Trade Paperback

BD|Trade Paperback

NT|0679886222 Trade Paperback

KE|BOYS

KE|FICTION

KE|CHILDREN

KE|S

KE|JUVENILE

KE|GENERAL

KE|MEN

PR|2.5

XA|4

XB|5

XC|BO

XD|S

the text before the | is the field name and the text after the | is the info.

each record is seperated by a blank line as you can see. i need to import a file with about 1000 listing like this. as of now it imports all this as one record. any ideas.

Excel can use the pipe character "|"as a delimited, Once this is done, you will only need to eliminate the extra blank rows, either by deleting them in Excel (not an easy task), or do a search for blank records in FileMaker after import.

HTH

Lee

thanks i got that. but when filemaker imports it sees each row as a new record. i need all the info up to the blank put into one record.

If you are using the current version of Excel (Office X or Windows 2000 or later), you can tranpose your data into rows in Excel. Highlight the data for one record, choose Paste Special under the Edit menu and highlight a horizontal selection of cells with the same number of cells as your vertical selection. In the Paste Special dialog box, check the Transpose box and click OK. Your data will paste into a row. Of course, this is OK for just a few records. For a thousand, it may be possible to record a Macro in Excel but that is not one of my stronger areas. Another reader possibly can advise about that.

import your records in a "support" database first, every line is one record, every line fits in one field.

then a script browse the entire database, one line at a time.

for each line it creates/update a record in the final database where information have to be imported.

Hi Paolo,

This tread has been moved, (continued in):

FileMaker Functions & Features >> Importing & Exporting Re: easier import

Lee